Saturday, 20 February 2016

“You're just crazy! Crazy and cruel!” Italy in
the 1970s was a turbulent place and time, rocked by socio-political change and
rife with organised crime. Drug cartels, kidnapping schemes, and young gangs
left the police scrabbling to catch up and the public locking themselves away.
Reacting to this period of fear, the film makers of the era unleashed a series
of hard-as-nails crime pictures and hard-bitten 'poliziotteschi' films.
Menacing rogue cops modelled on Dirty Harry dominated, but sometimes the
violent criminals took centre stage. One example would be Umberto Lenzi's Almost Human (1974), but not to be outdone – even in the twilight of his
career – Mario Bava (best known for horror films like Black Sunday or
Kill Baby Kill) dived into the fray with Rabid Dogs. However,
it was sucked into a nightmarish legal limbo before the low budget production
had even finished. The film, which many feared to be lost forever, remained
unseen for more than twenty years before, at long last, it was pulled from the
ashes and given new life...

Click “READ MORE” below to continue the review and see more
screenshots…

Tuesday, 16 February 2016

What's it about?The third instalment in the anthology series in which different writer/director teams conjure up strange tales of horror. This time there's a killer magician, a gateway to a parallel dimension, and skater kids taking on 'Blind Dead' style zombies in Mexico.Who would I recognise in it?Erm...Great/Good/Alright/Shite?V/H/S was decent - but had significant flaws, the biggest being an overlong run time, and some truly unlikable male characters with whom you didn't want to spend any time with whatsoever. The latter aspect was, indeed, rather insulting to the entire male gender, tarring all blokes with the same brush while simultaneously reducing the female characters to sketched-in object/avenger binary codes.

V/H/S/2 was a considerable step up in quality, with a talented range of writer/directors behind the camera, a much more suitable running time, and a range of tales (with interesting characters) that displayed a wealth of invention and creativity - not to mention fun!

The third film? I try not to come down too hard on flicks, particularly in the last few years, and my tolerance for garbage is fairly high (there's usually something to redeem even your shoddiest bit of grindhouse grot) ... but V/H/S: Viral is, and there's no softly-softly way of saying this - dreadful...

Monday, 15 February 2016

Finally! TWD is back, and holy crap did it deliver on the tease that was offered up in 6x08! As per the norm, expect new memes with each new TWD episode - that said, looking over memes of old (the good, the bad, and 'they-were-funny-at-the-time'), I'll be aiming to trim out the bum notes from this point forward.

Friday, 5 February 2016

“It looks like we'll all wind up in this damn
freezer.” Heavily indebted to Agatha Christie's 'Ten Little Indians', Five
Dolls For An August Moon – scripted by Mario di Nardo – is a project, with
director Mario Bava's own confession, that he made 'under protest'. Denied
extra time to rework the script, and never fully investing in its making as a
result, the Black Sunday filmmaker nevertheless crafted a lush vision of
privileged degenerates on an island retreat allowing their greed and blood lust
get the better of them...

Click “READ MORE” below to continue the review and see more
screenshots…

Tuesday, 2 February 2016

Deadpool- you might have heard about it - is almost upon us (February 10th in the UK, and the 12th in North America) and, much to the delight of fans, this time it will play true to its naughty roots and get a full-bore R-Rating in America.

This is important because it means Deadpoolcan be released, unmolested by the scissors of knicker-twisted censors, upon the viewing public and - even more importantly - it means that international audiences can not only get the full beans, but a good chance of an audience-friendly rating to boot.

Therefore it's interesting to note the uncut 15 rating that Deadpool has just received in the United Kingdom from the British Board of Film Classification - and this perfectly encapsulates why cinema fans the world over need the Motion Picture Association of America to get a grip and change their rating system...

About Me

I am a British freelance filmmaker, as well as a writer, movie fanatic, and zombie obsessive. I am the author of "Dug Deep" and the "Celebrityville" series of books, and write for Sleaze Fiend Magazine and Homepage of the Dead. I'm the screenwriter for the upcoming film "For Want of a Nail".
Of the many filmmakers who influence me, some are: Romero, Raimi, Carpenter, Cameron, Fincher, Tarantino, Rodriguez, Kubrick, Boyle, Zombie, Martino, Fulci, Argento, Cronenberg, Marshall, Smith, Nolan, Dominik, Scott, Mann, Hooper, De Palma, Leone, Spielberg and Zemeckis.